Just when you thought continued belief in any of the various brands of "Peak Oil" theory could hardly become less sustainable, you get a week like this one. No matter whether you come at Peak Oil from the supply side or the demand side, several events this week would have had to put you in a definitively sour mood.

Starting off this "No Good Terrible Very Bad" week for the Peak Oilers, UN International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol debunked a popular piece of the demand side of the theory. Speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 22, Birol told the delegates that “To say that the electric car is the end of oil is definitely misleading." Oh.

Birol expanded on that theme by adding emphatically that “Cars are not the driver of oil demand growth. Full stop." Birol made things even more problematic for those who wish to dramatically accelerate the displacement of internal combustion cars with EVs via massive subsidies for environmental reasons by pointing to the fact that EVs in fact do little to reduce emissions, pointing to the fact that most of the electricity globally is still generated using coal and other fossil fuels. “Where does the electricity come from, to say that electric cars are a solution to our climate change problem? It is not,” he said.

The second major theme of Birol's remarks also no doubt left Peak Oilers crestfallen, as he revealed that the IEA's projection for 2019 crude oil demand growth remains a robust 1.3 million barrels of oil per day despite a slowing global economy. (Note: The report itself has the estimate for 2019 at an even more robust 1.4 million bopd, so Birol may have misspoken.)

This represents a double whammy for the demand side of Peak Oil theory, since the theory always assumes that demand for crude oil can be reduced by slowing economic growth. Indeed, many of the adherents to this demand-side theory actively advocate for governments to pursue policies that would intentionally slow or eliminate economic growth.

Simply put: If the data and projections that Birol rolled out at Davos are accurate, then the often absurdly-aggressive projections of global demand for crude oil reaching its "peak" within a handful of years will have the revised.

But the capper of the week hit hard at the handful of die-hards who still cling bitterly to the belief that the world is running out of oil, and that global production either already has or soon will reach its "peak" and begin a gradual decline. This supply side of Peak Oil theory been repeatedly debunked in its various iterations since it first began to come up in the late 1800s.

This side of the theory was rendered pretty much moot with the advent of the shale era, which led its former advocates at places like the anti-fossil fuel Post-Carbon Institute to switch sides, and turn to demand-side advocacy instead. But for those hardy supply-side advocates still out there, January 24 went south in a hurry with the release of a new report from independent research firm Rystad Energy.

In this new report's base case, Rystad projects that the United States industry is poise to produce more than 24 million barrels of total petroleum liquids (crude oil, condensate and natural gas liquids) per day by the year 2025. If Rystad's projection comes to fruition, U.S. total liquids production would surpass that of Saudi Arabia and Russia combined in that year.

For context, and to understand the scale of the shale revolution in the U.S., the country's total liquids output as recently as 2008 was around seven million bopd. Barely a decade later, that number has jumped to roughly 15 million bopd. A jump of another nine million bopd in the next six years, as Rystad projects, almost defies belief.

Until, that is, one considers that the domestic oil and gas industry increased U.S. crude oil production alone by two million barrels per day from October 2017 through September 2018. So, a rise of nine million bopd in total liquids production over six years suddenly doesn't seem so unbelievable after all.

If supply-side Peak Oil theory was on life support before, Rystad's new data should kill it dead, although it will almost certainly pop up once again somewhere down the road. If history tells us anything about Peak Oil theory, it is that there will always be another set of opportunists ready to promote it in some form for their own purposes.

David Blackmon is an independent energy analyst/consultant based in Mansfield, TX. David has enjoyed a 39-year career in the oil and gas industry, the last 23 years of which were spent in the public policy arena, managing regulatory and legislative issues for various compan...